You are here: Home > Mumbai > iPhone 3G Cost WON'T Be Halved

Even though cost of the slick phone has  been cut by half in the UK and US, in India it means a price cut of only around Rs 5,000

Indians hoping to own the iPhone at slashed prices after the new and speedy iPhoneS is launched here in August have more reasons to frown than be happy.
 
Though iPhone prices in the US and UK were halved, nothing of that sort will happen in India.

Improved Version: Vendors at Heera Panna and Alfa believe that the iPhone 3G-S is just an upgrade to the iPhone 3G, where the S stands for speed.

Markets like Heera Panna and Alfa have been flooded with queries after Apple announced that prices of the iPhone 3G would be halved in markets where the iPhone 3GS was launched on June 19.

Pay Rs 5K less

"But don't just skim the headlines and jump with joy at the sight of 50 per cent iPhone price-cut," cautioned Nadeem Khan, a vendor at Heera Panna.

Apple, while announcing the iPhone 3G-S, had announced that the older one's price would be slashed from $200 (Rs 9,700) to $100 (Rs 4,800).

"This would have ideally meant that the price of an iPhone available at Rs 36,000 would be halved. But the truth is that the price reduction in India is a mere $100.

Thus, the real impact of the price-cut is likely to only be a Rs 4,500 to Rs 5,000 cut in the price of the Indian iPhone 3G," said an expert dealing in mobile phones at Alfa.
 
Vendors at Heera Panna and Alfa believe that the iPhone 3G-S is just an upgrade to the iPhone 3G, where the S stands for speed.

Still niche

Vendors added that the iPhone has not been positioned as a value-for-money product in India.
 
"The high price range coupled with the fact that data services are primarily being positioned around iPhone (both by Vodafone and Airtel) has resulted in the iPhone being confined to a limited market.

This has greatly shrunk the addressable market of the model in India," said telecom analysts.
 
Though the iPhone has crossed the 10-million mark globally since its launch in June 2008, in India there is still no clarity on the number of takers for the popular model.
 
Both Bharti Airtel and Vodafone declined to comment on the number of official iPhone subscribers registered.